


Aaron Coady's Spooky Spook House

by masongrey



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: AU, Haunted House, M/M, cute af
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 15:15:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4611534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masongrey/pseuds/masongrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off of this prompt from Artificial Queens: “I work in a haunted house and it’s right in the middle of Halloween hype season so I’m doing my grade-A television-worthy zombie impersonation. So when I jumped around the corner to scare you, you punched me directly in the face, and now you’re torn between making sure I’m okay and trying to convince your friends that you weren’t actually afraid.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aaron Coady's Spooky Spook House

**Author's Note:**

> I'm usually total Pearlet trash, but I had to write this. Hope you like this <333

“So, just to reiterate, there will be absolutely no touching the guests. And for the love of all that is holy, no more chasing small children. Alright? Yes, Sharon, I’m talking to you. You’d think we had a giant sign with ‘free lawsuit’ written on it stuck in the lawn or something. Knock it the fuck off.” Roy, the shift manager, rattles off, rapping his pencil against his clipboard and stabbing an accusatory finger at Sharon, the tall, ditzy blonde with a flair for a certain punk-rock terror that doesn’t exactly appeal to most of the younger patrons of the spook house.

Danny smirks, checking his green zombie face-paint in his compact mirror. Three years of working the halloween season at Aaron Coady’s Spooky Spook House, and it’s never gotten any easier, or any less interesting.

Roy claps his hands as the break room dissolves into chatter. “People, people! Order, order! Okay, so I need my zombies over here, my disformed freaks over there and- for god’s sake Matt put away the weed! It’s still illegal in 48 states, pal. And this break room is still in one of those 48.”

Stoner Matt rolls his eyes and blindly stubs it out, landing the fiery tip right in the middle of his werewolf paw by mistake. The room is quickly filled with the stench of burned hair in addition to the dank smells of weed and algae that already color the vivid air of the break room. Matt jumps to his feet, whipping the werewolf paw off of his hand and letting out a string of hazy curses.

“Single file line, idiots.” Roy crows with a smirk. “Five minutes until showtime! Five minutes! Uh, okay,” he taps on his clipboard. “So the jump scares tonight go to: Daniel Noriega, Jerick Hoffer and of course, the lovely succubus, Max Malanaphy. Wait- where’s the succubus?”

“Uh, Max is in the bathroom, I think,” Justin drawls, putting the finishing touches on his vampire ensemble as he shuffles into line.

“Of all the… we can’t start without the succubus!” Roy runs a hand through his short hair in utter exasperation.

Danny lets out a low laugh, pressing a few fingers onto the deep red “gash” at his neck. He looks damn good, damn dead. He always does, whether he’s a troll or a zombie or a chainsaw murderer. If only his epic halloween makeup skills could be so easily applied to his everyday life of empty pizza boxes and a shitty day job at the laundromat.

Max skips into the room, his long, pale face done out in grey-black tones and deep purple shadow.

“The succubus has arrived!” He trills, bowing slightly.

Someone throws a makeup sponge at him and the room dissolves into laughter.

“Hey!” Roy shouts. “Let’s go!“

And then they jump to attention, falling into their own respective lines with practice and ease.

Danny rolls his neck and cracks his knuckles eagerly. For as much as they all complain and gripe and moan about their jobs, there’s a certain charm and undeniable appeal to scaring the shit out of people on a daily basis that’s completely unavoidable and totally infectious.

Danny gets a jump scare tonight, and he can’t fucking wait.

\- - -

Jason cocks his hip, scrolling through his phone with a sigh.

“This looks sucky af.” He gripes.

“Hey,” Kurtis whines, shaking Jason’s shoulder. “Aaron Coady’s Spooky Spook House is a magnificent venue, built especially for high class entertainment and fun times.” Jason snorts, glaring up at the winding line that stands between them and the door. Kurtis frowns up at the dilapidated building, trying a small smile. “It got four out of five stars on yelp?”

Brian laughs, loudly. Jason just sighs and rolls his eyes for the millionth time today.

“Well, it’s halloween, goddamnit!” Kurtis shouts, raising a rousing fist into the air. “And I refuse to let us sit on our asses eating candy apples and watching Saw reruns. We may technically be too old to trick-or-treat, but there is no such thing as being too old for,” he pauses, craning his neck to read the sign that hangs ahead, “loads of spooky fun!”

“It’s a dumb haunted house for babies and geriatrics.” Jason says. He’s not entirely wrong, the entire line looks either pretty short and young or stooped and old.

Brian shrugs, patting Jason on the head. Jason shrinks away with an annoyed hiss, turning his focus back to his phone. “It’s like five bucks per person, Jase. Might as well. If it’s gonna make chicken-lady over there happy enough for us all to go back to my place and eat candy and watch old Saw reruns, then it’s worth it in my books,” he pauses, laughing. “Chicken-lady, holy shit, I can’t believe that I just said that,” he mutters.

“I’m going to pretend like that never happened, and I suggest you do too,” Kurtis snaps, narrowing his eyes. Jason snorts. Kurtis always was sort of sensitive about his chicken childhood.

“Can we just go home already?” Jason whines, pulling his hair up into a tight bun.

“No. We can’t. I came here for a haunted house, and dammit, I’m getting in to one. To make things a little more interesting, I’ll make you a wager.” Kurtis smiles, folding his hands triumphantly over his chest. “We can watch Saw, if you two bravehearts can manage your way through this entire haunted house without a single scream.”

Jason and Brian look up at each other, trading quick smiles and questioning glances.

“Deal,” Jason smiles, sliding his phone into his back pocket and putting his gameface on. He’s never been one to turn down a good competition.

It’s on.

\- - -

Danny’s heart is pounding in his chest. The tiny black pager (yes, they still exist) by his water bottle blinks red and buzzes slightly, letting him know that the first group is on it’s way through. Show time, chola.

After three years of working here, Danny may or may not be a scaring professional. It’s not as easy as it seems, the jump scare especially needs to be so much more carefully timed than the average bystander might think.

There are three big “scares” from the door to Danny’s jump position. If the audience responds as intended, the sounds of the other scares will give Danny the extra edge he needs to make sure he catches them just unawares and perfectly in time and scares their fucking pants off.

He hears the first set of scattered screams and smiles. Showtime.

There’s the second and, finally, the third. After the third, Danny surges forward, pressing his face up to the peephole that’s been drilled into the musty wall. He can barely make out the crowd of people being led through the darkened room. One Mississippi, he counts off in his head, already stretching his face into a perfect zombie leer. Two Mississippi, three Mississippi. 

He jumps on three, flashing his teeth and moaning, crashing out from behing the wall and into the crowd of screaming patrons.

Courtney, the Australian tour guide, gives him a wink as she sheperds the screaming people past him and to the next scare.

He pats himself on the back and takes a swig of water. Job well done, Noriega. Job well done. He readjusts his tattered shirt and makes it behind the partition just in time for the pager buzz signaling that the next group is on it’s way.

The night is young, and he has many, many more people to scare. He fucking loves his job.

He fucking loves Halloween.

\- - -

The man at the ticket booth hands them three tickets with a tired smile.

“Please gather in the first room and wait for your tour guide to arrive. Don’t touch the performers and they won’t touch you. Thank you for visiting Aaron Coady’s Spooky Spook House, have a screaming good time.”

Jason bites back a snicker and follows Brian and Kurtis into the crumbling house. If this man is any indication, they have a snooze of a time waiting for them.

-

The first two room are mildly creepy at best. Jason rolls his eyes at the obvious jump scares and steps quickly around the spook facade that’s set up all around them.

He totally called it. Sucky af.

It’s only when he turns the blindly corner, and runs face-first into a howling, screaming zombie jumping out of the dark at him, that he reacts.

Without thinking, he strikes out, sending his fist crashing into said zombie’s rotted nose.

Kurtis gasps and Brian starts howling.

Yeah, he’s probably going to regret that later. At least he didn’t scream like a little girl.

\- - -

Danny does one, two, twelve, twenty perfect scares.

He’s on the twenty-first, still perfectly timed, still fearsomely scary, when it happens.

He springs out from behind his wall, bares his teeth and gets a fist right in the face.

He falls back against a stack of moldy crates, stars spinning in his eyes. In all his three years at Spook House, this has never once happened. He has never once touched a guest, a guest has never once touched him. Unless you count the little girl that had clung desperately to his leg when he had worked as a tour guide.

“What the fuck. . ?” He manages, trying to stem the flow of blood that’s now dribbling out of his nose.

“Holy shit!” A voice gasps. “Oh, shit. Holy shit. Wow you surprised me.”

Danny laughs softly, cradling his injured nose. “Kinda the point.”

“Okay,” Courtney strains, trying to move the group onwards. “It’s alright, he’s not alive, he can’t feel pain. He’s a zombie, ladies and gents. A zombie. Let’s keep moving, shall we?”

Danny snorts, sending another wave of pain crashing into his nose. “Shit,” he mutters.

There’s a firm hand pressing against his shoulder. It’s probably Roy, here to yell at him for letting guests touch him.

Danny looks up, ready to thoroughly apologize and kiss some serious ass when he stops short. There’s a boy standing there, wearing the smallest capri shorts Danny’s ever seen and a striped shirt with a cute black ascot tied around his neck. His shoulder length black hair falls over his eyes and his other hand is pressed into his tiny hips. His skin glows in the weird lighting and he looks like the most beautiful thing Danny may have ever seen. Danny swallows.

“Hi,” the boy grimaces, shrugging. “Sorry I punched you.”

“Hi. I’m Danny,” Danny says, rubbing the blood on his hand off on his pants and offering it to the boy to shake. Fuck the no touching patrons, rule. He’ll be damned if he lets this boy go after only touching him once.

Er, after only being punched by him once.

The boy smiles softly and bites his lip as he takes Danny’s hand, his eyes flickering.

“Jason, come on!” Someone shouts from farther ahead.

“Coming,” the boy, Jason, bellows. He turns to Danny, shifting nervously. “So, no hard feelings?”

Danny shrugs, grinning. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Jason snorts. “I paid to get scared. Which I haven’t been, by the way. I demand a refund.”

Danny leans back on his hands, wiping absentmindedly at the blood dripping from his nose. “Oh, right. You jumped four feet in the air and nearly broke my nose because I pleasantly surprised you to death.”

Jason scoffs, shifting his feet. “I told you, you startled me, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Danny’s voice drops embarrassingly low and Jason’s throat works as they stare at each other. “You startled me too.”

“JASON!” The voice thunders, and it jerks both Danny and Jason to attention.

“I’d better go,” Jason babbles, tugging his ascot.

“Yeah, same,” Danny hobbles to his feet, listening for the buzz of his pager.

“Look-” they start simultaneously, both falling short and staring down at the ground awkwardly.

“Look,” Jason tries again, “My friends and I are watching a Saw marathon after? Because technically I didn’t scream or anything. And I have to make it up to you somehow, right? So, uh, do you want to? Watch Saw with me?”

Danny grins. “My shift is over at ten.”

Jason smiles triumphantly and extends his hand. Danny claps his own hand softly over it, before realizing that the other boy is asking for his phone. He hands it over with an embarrassed smile. Jason punches a few keys, saving his phone number into Danny’s phone.

Then, with a wave and a swish of long black hair, he’s gone.

His number, it turns out, is saved under that ‘jackass that punched you aka jason aka jackass jason’.

He sends a quick text before he can re-think it and shoves his phone away, trying to get his head back in the game.

TO jackass that punched you aka jason aka jackass jason: you’re so cute when you shriek

He gets a response within seconds.

FROM jackass that punched you aka jason aka jackass jason: you’re so cute when you’re pretending to be dead and incoherent

Danny can barely muster the concentration to scare the last five groups, in his mind he’s already curled up on the couch next to jackass Jason, letting the other boy jump into his arms whenever he gets scared. Which, if his experience today was any precendent, might happen quite a bit.

Danny smiles. Yep, he fucking loves scaring people.

Yep, he fucking loves Halloween.

\- -


End file.
